The Charlotte Observer
Smugglers increasingly are crossing the southern U.S. border by land to bring drugs into the state
SOUTH CAROLINA -- Enrique Valdovinos ran the Mexican restaurant Los Caporales — which means “The Cattle Bosses” — on Two Notch Road just outside Columbia.
But Valdovinos, 36, had a secret life. He had hidden in a car trunk to enter the United States illegally and had gone into drug smuggling. In fact, he had become a major local dealer, bringing into the Midlands up to 100 kilograms of cocaine worth almost $2 million in recent years.
Sentenced in February to 10 years in prison, Valdovinos represents a new trend in South Carolina’s thriving drug trade: Mexico is now the state’s primary source of illegal drugs, federal, state and local agents say.
Increased post-9/11 security at the state’s airports and ports has helped push the bulk of the drug trade over land, through Mexico.
Even the cocaine produced in South America is being moved into South Carolina primarily through Mexico.
Mexican drug rings “dominate trafficking in South Carolina,” according to a February report from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, the nation’s lead drug-fighting agency. South Carolinians in rural and urban areas now consume Mexican drugs.
Posted by tyne at April 16, 2007